In this week’s episode of The IMPACT Show, special guest co-host Stacy and I discussed what’s going on in IMPACT Elite, 3 key marketing shifts identified at Traffic & Conversion Summit, Google search snippets, and much more.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording. It’s also on YouTube. That reminds me…are you subscribed to our YouTube Channel?

IMPACT Updates

Well, you may notice you can’t leave a new review right now. HubSpot said they knew reviews needed tweaking so they are working on a better, new review system but for now you’ll only see existing reviews. They also removed a few filters that weren’t getting much use.

However, the page definitely got a face lift and is now available to non-HubSpot customers whereas it only used to be in the app. Now users can find a partner before they begin their HubSpot journey.Listings are also now available for un-tiered partners. This helps with sales partners who focus on sales enablement and sales tools.

Ultimately, as a marketer at an organization the changes will make it easier for you to find an agency to match your needs.

Traffic and Conversion Summit Update!

As are most things DigitalMarketer puts on, it was great! 3 days chock full of great content, speakers and insights. Bob, Tom and Stacy brought back lots of info for our team but Bob also shared the Ryan Deiss keynote in Elite and asked how everyone felt about it.

What Marketers Be Talkin’ ‘Bout

Where we go over what you’re saying in IMPACT Elite.

In Elite, Bob shared the 3 shifts that Ryan Deiss believes all marketers need to be aware of and take advantage of:

Conversation is the new lead, and how we need to capitalize on the power of chat bots to engage with our customers in a faster, more helpful way.

Community is the new brand – and how important it is for you to be the go-to resource for your industry.

Customer is the new power broker, and the companies that are the most customer centric will win.

Stacy weighed in to say all of this was continuously reinforced by the other speakers at Traffic & Conversion Summit.

She went on to say how conversation marketing was by far the hottest topic at the conference. David Cancel (CEO of Drift) had some amazing points along these lines about how we marketers have become so obsessed with excel spreadsheets and analytics that we forget how important human conversations are, and how much more valuable to the business they can be than numbers in a spreadsheet.

At IMPACT, we clearly believe in community, so this one is a no-brainer. Facebook is making a lot of moves and changes to foster this type of community engagement so it is only going to become more important.

What I love about the third one (Customer is the new power broker) is that it isn’t new at all. Customer has always been king, sometimes we just need a reminder.

I also loved the 40+ comment thread on Bob’s discussion in Elite where Chad Pollitt, John McTigue, Doug Davidoff and Chris Handy had an EPIC conversation about all of this. Chris even suggested a “Facebook live [with] a good-natured panel discussion” which I would personally love to witness!

Next in Elite…

There was a great post by Kaitlyn Casso: I’m looking for some recommendations on how to get sales buy-in when it comes to videos. […]Here are things they are worried about:

Displaying the client to the public giving our competitors a chance to try to steal them

They will feel uncomfortable recording themselves

It will put a damper on their relationship because now they are uncomfortable saying no to us.

Salma Jafri replied agreeing with Zach and pointing out how a good next step would be to map out the types of videos according to a potential buyer’s journey.

Stacy said: “I’d agree with most of the great advice presented by the incredibly smart members of elite. Often one of the most overlooked parts of this conversation is how it will make the customer feel to be a part of something like this. Most often they are flattered that you’d like them to participate and it actually helps with the relationship. And as all marketers, I like to play amateur psychologist. But one of the most interesting things about humans is how being asked to do a favor someone actually makes us like them more.”

There was another great post by Elite member John McTigue posted: “With all of the hype about AI and automation in sales and marketing, how are you layoff-proofing yourself? What will make you indispensable in the next few years?” Check out the full post and discussion in Elite.

I personally was drawn to this immediately because it closely relates to the topic I’m submitting to speak on at INBOUND this year.

John said he’d: “learn as much as possible about all of the apps coming on stream, pick a few that make the most sense for your typical clients and dive in. Be THE EXPERT in those apps. Then show the money to your company, your customers and the World.”

Ed Marsh reminded us “but simultaneously know that the run will only last 2-3 years and don’t get comfortable even as dominant. Really hard!”

Emily Hulstein weighed in saying: “AI can only offer so much “human” to it’s list of capabilities. Practice empathy and become great at understanding the power of emotional human connections. That can’t be replaced. You will always bring something to the table that AI cannot.”

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, we share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught our eye.

Emotion analytics has been a field for a number of years now, but mostly relegated to super techie machine learning companies. They’ve been working to build methods to analyze voice, tone, posture, and other indicators of emotions to try and quantify and analyze someone’s emotions.

Now marketing is going to benefit from some of these ideas. There are a few companies out there working on facial tracking technologies to do just this (in fact Apple even bought one of these start-ups to bring the knowledge in house).

This will help bring us back to the core of marketing. We know that people buy a feeling or an emotion rather than a product or a “thing.” This technology may help us dial in our messaging and help connect companies to the consumers they serve on a more human level.

Rand’s post was so transparent and honest and I think that’s part of what we love so much about him. What caught my eye even more though was what he’s up to next. Rand says in his blog, “I’m hoping we can solve the thorny, painful problem of discovering where a given audience spends time, who and what they listen to, and where they engage.

Some folks call this “influencer marketing” but I’ve found that terminology to be too limiting. It’s often exclusively associated with paying Instagram and YouTube celebrities to post about a product, and that’s not where this product/company is going. In the next year, I hope to have a product I can show you.”

Multifaceted featured snippets will be surfaced for queries that are sufficiently broad enough to allow for more than one interpretation of what was submitted. When this happens the results page will include more than one featured snippet.

One of the most interesting parts is it says “with the original query rewritten as the questions the algorithm assumes the user may have intended” Sound familiar? Sounds like They Ask You Answer to me!

Next Steps:

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We’re going to IMPACT Elite to ask what you want us to talk about, so jump in on the post there.